Ask HN: How would you write novels for people who rarely read entire books? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you write novels for people who rarely read entire books?

7 pointsamichail14 comments

People do read a lot nowadays, but generally this consists of reading short articles and snippets of text.

The internet has made people very impatient when it comes to reading long articles/books.

How would you write a novel for people who rarely read books cover to cover?

This is an interesting question, but I am not sure about some of the assumptions behind it.

Consider how I do things: the net has indeed made me impatient, in many contexts. When I read an HN post, I usually give it at most a paragraph or so to convince me it's worth finishing. If I'm not convinced by then, I usually skip the rest. If I am convinced, I still often just skim the rest.

However, I still read novels. I read them the old-fashioned way, cover-to-cover, in order. But I do so in a very different context from my web browsing. So, the way to write a novel for me is much the same way that a novel was written 50 or 100 years ago.

But that's just me. Other people might be different; I wouldn't know. However, in that case, I must ask another question: if someone isn't going to read a novel, then why would you want to write one for them?

I suspect that the number of people willing to read a novel cover to cover is or will be decreasing due to the internet.

But maybe there is a way for novels to remain relevant in an impatient world. Writing very short chapters would help, but I suspect more is needed than that.

For example, how do you help people remember what they read in a novel fragment? What sort of technology might you use?

Writing a STORY in anything less than chapter length segments wouldn't work very well - there has to be enough content and context for the reader to get into the story. And for that matter, the average length of published fiction has been growing for decades, many, maybe most novels now are as long as the extremes, like Dune, from the sixties, and short stories have become increasingly rare from the early 1970s on. Multi-book novels (trilogies, and longer) have often become normal, especially in science fiction - see most of the works of John Ringo and of David Weber, for examples.

I'd analyze Michael Crichton's work, and extrapolate the answer.

How would you write a novel for people who rarely read books cover to cover?

Just like the author of the Twilight series.

http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Saga-Collection-Stephenie-Mey...

That is, if I could hold my nose that long to get through the manuscript.

I wouldn't. To me that is like writing music for the tone deaf. The wrong direction I'd want do go if doing anything creative.

Removing content and splitting ideas into bite sized pieces seems the way to go. Also, remember these people rarely buy books but people still buy books for them. You could target the "gift" book market.

Agreed: Why bother? FWIW, lately I've swung away from reading stuff online, RSS feeds, etc. and back to novels. I'd forgotten how much more satisfying long-form reading is. It's like food: Junk food seems really tasty, but you forget how much better a good meal is.

This is a weird goal. I would guess your best shot would be making each chapter of the book short enough to be read in a short period of time and (more importantly) an independent story capable of standing on its own. How you balance that independence with a flowing story in a novel is a hard question.

This is not necessarily that unusual. A lot of novels that we consider classics today were written in installments for the publications of their time.

Charles Dickens, for one, did it. I think it's a great idea for writing something.

Write a whole novel in bullet points. Release one page per day in a blog format.

Or how about a twitter account where each status update says what's happening now to the main character?

Write it as a screenplay; film it as a series of 45-minute episodes.

The same people who don't read long books will often watch ten- or twenty-hour seasons of a television show.

Use very short chapters. If a person only needs to spend 10 mins to advance to the next chapter, they are more likely to complete the book.

Tim OReilly's twitter book is like a slide deck. It's also not really writing.

Serialized. One chapter/scene per post. RSS feed mandatory.

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